Discover How The 8 Limbs Of Yoga Transformed My Dull Classes
In this post, you’ll discover how the eight limbs of yoga transformed my dull classes, and how they became so popular that I needed people to go on a waiting list, and then had to find a larger venue.
My name is George Watts.
I’m a BWY yoga teacher and have taught 800+ classes in the last 15 years.
I hope you’ve been enjoying the hundreds of free yoga class planning tips, ready-to-use yoga class plans, and yoga class handouts on my site. They are resources that I’ve personally used for my own yoga classes.
I’m always brainstorming ways to create yoga class plans that WOW my students.
But it wasn’t always that way.
To be honest, I used to be incredibly dull with my yoga lesson planning.
That’s dull with a big capital D!
The reason for this abundance of dullness was because I was trying to teach like a traditional, left brain, archetypal, stereotypical yoga teacher. I made the mistake of copying other yoga teachers that I respected and the result was that students would leave my yoga classes, never to return.
I had to face facts!
And the looming, inescapable fact slapping me across the face was that my classes were…
Dull.
I had to find a cunning way to compete with Pilates and Zumba classes. At the dance studio where I host my yoga classes there are Pilates and Zumba classes.
A few years ago, when my class numbers were low, if I wanted to torture myself with a quick dose of reality, I would flip open the dreaded attendance folder that everyone using the hall had to fill out, and take a peek at the class numbers for pilates (usually 20 to 30 students).
Then, if I needed more open-eyed reality, I would flip to Wednesday and see the class numbers for Zumba (usually 50 to 60 students).
And if I wanted even more stark reality, I would flip to the previous week for my yoga class and see “5 or 6”. My little brain would go “click, whirr, click, click, whirr” before the calculation caused the little voice in my head to say:
“Wow, George, take a look at that. That there Zumba class is getting ten times more students than your yoga class.”
That is the polite version of what my brain actually said.
I know.
I know what you’re about to say.
“Oh, George you shouldn’t see it as a competition. That’s very unyogic of you.”
And I humbly beg to disagree.
Here’s why…
Most yoga teachers limp along with low class numbers and delude themselves into thinking accepting low class numbers is somehow wonderfully yogic and spiritual. Yet, if the yoga teacher stopped practicing asanas (which is just a poultry 1/8th of yoga according to good old Patanjali, author of the 8 limbs of yoga) and actually put the eight limbs of yoga philosophy into practice, they’d begin to see the low class numbers as it really is, instead of through rose tinted glasses.
Low class numbers is a warning sign.
Low class numbers is unsustainable.
Low class numbers will soon cause you to say something like this when someone calls you up to inquire about your yoga class…
“Sorry, but my yoga class has stopped forever and ever, but I’ve heard the Zumba class is pretty good.”
Here’s How I Applied The 8 Limbs Of Yoga To Go From 5 to 25 Students In My Yoga Classes
Just in case you still think accepting low class numbers and being humble is the yogic way, here’s how I practiced the 8 limbs of yoga to help go from 5 to 25 students per class.
How I Applied The Fifth Limb
The 5th limb of yoga (Pratyahara) teaches us to focus on one thing at at time. And I was focusing on “one thing” – the untarnished truth that my yoga classes were spectacularly unsustainable.
How I Applied The Second Limb
I was practicing the second limb of yoga (Santosha) because I was content regardless of the outcome.
I would happily teach the yoga class even if only one student turned up. Why? Well, because I enjoy teaching yoga and I’m not motivated by having loads of money.
I wasn’t practicing the Tapas, second limb of yoga (disciplined use of our energy) because I had willingly allowed my yoga class to become unsustainable. A disciplined use of my energy would be to make my classes more appealing – instead of the dry, tepid, old fashioned, left brain teaching I was dishing out to my students.
I was also practicing Svadhyaya, second limb of yoga (self study).
A Svadhyaya practice is any activity that cultivates self-reflective consciousness. It means to intentionally find self-awareness in all our activities and efforts, even to the point of welcoming and accepting our limitations.
Svadhyaya teaches us to burn out self-destructive tendencies. By accepting my limitations (low class numbers), I was able to burn one of my self-destructive tendencies (boring my students with run-of-the-mill yoga classes) by focusing on creating yoga lesson plans with interesting yoga class themes.
How I Applied The First Limb
I wasn’t practicing Aparigraha, first limb of yoga (take only what is necessary) because I was taking way less than what is necessary to sustain a yoga class.
To become a full time yoga teacher I had to allow myself to take more money, or close my yoga classes forever. That meant taking on 25 students per class. Anything less and I wouldn’t be able to sustain my classes and my students would end up at a pilates or Zumba class.
So, let’s recap
I was getting ten times less students than the Zumba instructor.
And if I didn’t change something soon, I would soon trudge wearily over to the graveyard of yoga teacher’s who’ve died of low class numbers, lay down and let the yoga teacher within die.
By putting the 8 limbs of yoga into practice (pratyahara, santosha, tapas, svadhyaya and aparigraha) I could hear my inner voice shout…
“That’s it. No more! Within 3 months I’m going from 5 to 25 students per class.”
Within three months, I had 25 students per class.
Necessity is the mother of all inventions. My necessity was to grow healthy, sustainable yoga classes instead of wilting, unsustainable ones.
And that’s why I spent 1000+ hours of my life creating the Online Yoga Lesson Planner. If I created the planner only for myself it wouldn’t have been a disciplined use of my energy (tapas). But, in the back of my mind I knew yoga teachers all over the world would also reap the benefits of my hard work.
Now several years on, my classes are still full and thousands of yoga teachers, trainers and trainees worldwide are using the Online Yoga Lesson Planner.
What’s the moral of this story?
Next time you’re teaching, I dare you…no, I double dare you to pick up the attendance folder and look for Zumba.
Once you’ve made a mental note of the enormous number of students coming to the Zumba class, glance over at the 5 or 6 students looking at you expectantly from their brightly coloured, sticky mats; then glance back at the attendance folder, and then say something like this…
“That’s it. No more! Within 3 months I’m going from 5 to 25 students per class.”
